


no chance to take it slow

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Series: ready or not, when the motor gets hot [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Metaverse (Persona 5), Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Established Relationship, Inspired by The Fast and the Furious, M/M, Polyamory, Rivals With Benefits, Street Racing, Trans Akechi Goro, Trans Male Character, Unreliable Narrator, akira is also trans but he's not the pov character so that's less relevant, background pegoryu, but it's goro's pov so that's not the focus, specifically when it comes to his own feelings, they are very much dating and in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26386231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: “So what’s a private investigator doing hanging out with a street racing gang?” He said it like he would be putting scare quotes around the words ‘private investigator’ if he’d been willing to put down his gun for long enough, like he wasn’t convinced it meant anything different than ‘cop,’ but that was an argument for later, preferably after he’d put down his gun.“Would you believe me if I said it was a midlife crisis?” Goro gave his most charming smile, the one he used on television interviewers and people who might be convinced to lend him money, and Sakamoto glared back with flat disapproval.“At twenty-five?”“Live fast, die young,” he said, a little more of an edge to his voice now, a hint of teeth in his smile. “Isn’t that your motto too?”-(Sometimes you just gotta write the Fast & Furious AU that you wanna see in the world, y'know?)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Sakamoto Ryuji
Series: ready or not, when the motor gets hot [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917673
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	1. who they want you to be, who they wanted to see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever been watching the classic Vin Diesel film The Fast & the Furious (2001) and thought to yourself, imagine how much better this movie would be with Akechi as the undercover cop, Joker as Vin Diesel, and also Ryuji is there because I love him? Yes? Good, we have so much in common and this is the fic for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings relevant throughout: poorly negotiated polyamory, references to offscreen sexual content, violence, non-explicit depictions of injuries, reckless driving, canon-typical levels of Goro's lack of regard for his own physical and emotional well-being
> 
> Content warnings specific to this chapter: threat of gun violence

> But damn if there isn't anything sexier
> 
> than a slender boy with a handgun,
> 
> a fast car, a bottle of pills.
> 
> (Richard Siken, _Little Beast_ )

* * *

“Scared yet?” Sakamoto said, tipping Goro’s chin up with the end of his shotgun, and Goro propped himself up on his elbows, as if he was lounging on the hard cement floor by choice and not because he’d been shoved, and grinned. It wasn’t like he hadn't been expecting this, like he didn’t know that no matter how careful he was, the Phantom Thieves didn’t get to the top of the racing world without a healthy amount of suspicion toward anyone trying to break into the closed ranks of their little gang. He hadn’t exactly been expecting Kurusu and his right hand man to jump him in the garage after leading him away from the afterparty with suggestions about inspecting engines that sounded more than a little bit suggestive, so he wasn’t as heavily armed as he’d like to be for this fight, if it came to that, but he was quick enough on the draw that he’d probably be able to get Sakamoto out of the way before he could do any real damage, and then. Well. He wasn’t sure if he could take Kurusu in a fair fight, but that was what made their rivalry so exciting, and anyway, who said he was going to fight fair?

More importantly, though, at the moment, was this: Sakamoto, for all his posturing, for all that he was jabbing the barrel of a gun into Goro’s throat, wasn’t going to shoot him. At least not fatally, but probably not at all. Goro had spent long enough watching the Phantom Thieves' movements, studying their profiles, to know that they weren’t killers, no matter what the headlines said, which was normally unfortunate because it made his job of framing them for crimes they would never dream of committing significantly harder, but in this moment it was useful and might be the only thing keeping him alive. Though he suspected Kurusu might be capable of murder if he needed to be, if his people were threatened, and Okumura might kill Goro specifically if she found out he was the one who killed her father, but Sakamoto was more bark than bite unless you asked him nicely.

“Of what?” he said. “You? You’ll need to try harder than this.” Not that he particularly wanted Sakamoto to try to hurt him. He’d let himself be knocked down, but he had an important client meeting the next day and didn’t particularly want Sakamoto fucking up his face. He would already have to wear extra concealer to hide the dark circles under his eyes, he didn’t need a split lip to go with it.

“If you insist,” said Sakamoto, but Kurusu laid a hand on his arm and shook his head. The lights in the garage were off, masking both of them in shadow, except a line of light from the streetlamps outside streaming in through the gap where the window wasn’t quite covered all the way _—_ someone should probably do something about that, he thought idly, if they didn’t want their operation to get busted, which would be such a shame, after all the work he’d put in to making sure no one else would catch them but him, and not until the right moment _—_ and falling across their faces, Kurusu’s piercing eyes sparkling as they caught the light.

“Let him explain,” said Kurusu, quietly, voice level and face carefully expressionless, so that Goro couldn’t tell if he meant _I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation because I trust him_ or _give him enough rope to hang himself and make him dig his own grave while we’re at it_.

“Explain what?” he said. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Except the obvious, of course.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh, nodding at the garage around them, full of car parts that ranged from dubiously legal to so flagrantly illegal it was a miracle they even existed, several of which he’d personally helped them acquire, a few of which were meant to eventually find their way into his car. One of his cars, the one they knew about. The other had already mods so illegal and so cutting-edge that the Phantom Thieves would probably no sooner see the engine than cannibalize it for parts. Of course, if they saw that car and recognized it and did some very simple math, the car envy would be the least of his problems.

“Cut the shit,” said Sakamoto. “We know you’re a goddamn cop. Private investigator. Whatever. Same difference.”

“Congratulations, you can do a google search,” said Goro, relaxing just a little bit. If that was all this was about, that was fine. His first layer of cover, the one he put the least effort into, might be blown, and with any luck they would think that meant they had him figured out and wouldn’t dig any deeper. Not that he ever allowed himself to rely on luck, which was the easiest way to end up dead in a ditch. “I did give you my real name.” The name he went by now, at any rate, which was as real as any other name he could’ve given. He’d stopped using his mother’s surname when he dropped out of school, deciding that she deserved better than to be linked in any way to what he was becoming.

Anyway, there’d been no point lying about who he was on paper, not when his face had been in and out of the media since he’d solved his first high profile case several years ago, and he wouldn’t put it past at least one person in the crew _—_ probably Mishima, or maybe Niijima, she seemed like the type _—_ to be really into true crime.

“So what’s a _private investigator_ doing hanging out with a street racing gang?” He said it like he would be putting scare quotes around the words ‘private investigator’ if he’d been willing to put down his gun for long enough, like he wasn’t convinced it meant anything different than ‘cop,’ but that was an argument for later, preferably after he’d put down his gun.

“Would you believe me if I said it was a midlife crisis?” Goro gave his most charming smile, the one he used on television interviewers and people who might be convinced to lend him money, and Sakamoto glared back with flat disapproval.

“At twenty-five?”

“Live fast, die young,” he said, a little more of an edge to his voice now, a hint of teeth in his smile. “Isn’t that your motto too?”

“Yeah, nice try,” Sakamoto said. “Why are you really here?”

“Why are any of us really here?” he said, just to be difficult. “Depending on which school of philosophical thought you subscribe to-”

“None of them,” Kurusu said. “I dropped out. Some private investigator you are, if you didn’t even know that. Are you going to answer the question, or not?”

It was probably best to stop pushing his luck now. Kurusu’s voice had been light, teasing, but he was clearly running out of patience with Goro’s bullshit. “It _was_ , technically, a midlife crisis that started it. Not mine, the guy I was investigating. His wife thought he was cheating, and he was, but he was also dabbling in street racing. You know the type: middle-aged, works in finance _—_ or should I say worked, he’s in prison now _—_ making too much money, thinks because he can afford a flashy car he knows how to drive a fast one.”

“Ugh,” Sakamoto said, grimacing dramatically, and Goro briefly amused himself by imagining him as the kind of teenage delinquent who spent his days smashing in the windshields and headlights of cars driven by men like that, probably sporting an even messier dye job and a spiked baseball bat.

“Indeed,” he said. “But I was… involved in this world as a teenager, and even that tangential brush with it while on a case was enough to realize how much I missed racing. There’s really nothing else that makes you feel quite so free, is there? Like everything else goes away because there’s no time to think about any of it.”

He’d been a _difficult_ child, which was the diplomatic way for his various poor excuses for guardians to say that he was angry and traumatized and too quiet until he wasn’t, and none of them would have been especially surprised to learn that he’d gotten himself caught up in a life of terribly thrilling petty crime, if they’d ever bothered to find out. A high school classmate had an older brother who hung around on the edges of the street racing scene, and that, along with his willingness to say whatever anyone wanted to hear if it meant getting his way, was enough to get him an introduction. They didn’t let him drive at first, because he was sixteen and didn’t know how and they all still looked at him and saw a lost schoolgirl, an honor student playing at being a delinquent, which was fucking hilarious: by high school he’d finally learned how to make himself more palatable, to finally get a little bit of conditional acceptance at school, only to realize that the new world he wanted to join would’ve preferred the anger he’d tried so hard to lock away. Too many sharp edges for polite society, sharp edges hidden too deeply for impolite society. And even after he dropped out of school and cut his hair and never dressed like a girl again, which he wished he’d had the guts to do years earlier the moment he’d done it, hardly anyone took him seriously. He was still too young, too idealistic, too soft. So he became tougher, and meaner, willing to take jobs no one else wanted to do and even more willing to break the wrists of anyone who dared touch him. By the time his crew became enough of a nuisance for Shido to want them taken care of, he’d made himself a reputation as a liar, a dirty fighter, a ruthless two-faced bitch, and a better driver than most of the men who had originally underestimated him and a faster driver than most of the rest. That was all that Shido, or more accurately Shido’s lackey, had known about him when he’d first approached him, offering to sell out his crew in exchange for a job, and it had been enough. He’d still never killed anyone when he made the deal, but that didn’t last long. Blood was, he soon found out, Shido' preferred way to close a deal, and his old crew wouldn’t have taken well to his betrayal if he’d given them half a chance to realize that it had happened.

Still. As terrible as the circumstances might have been, there was a reason he’d been drawn into racing in the first place. It was the closest he’d gotten to happiness since his mother, like if he drove fast enough his past couldn’t catch up to him and his future didn’t matter beyond the next turn. It was the only time he felt in control, and he sure fucking needed a little bit of that every once in a while.

“No,” Kurusu said, a little wistfully, “there’s really nothing like it,” and he knew he had them, because even if all of their rational doubts hadn’t been satisfied, their emotional ones had been, and that was ultimately more important.

“Job that boring, huh?” Sakamoto said.

“You have no idea,” Goro said. “People think private eyes are so glamorous but honestly, it’s mostly paperwork.” Assassins, on the other hand, had to do much less paperwork, but just as much sitting around and waiting and going to incredibly frustrating meetings with people who expected him to fulfill their every whim despite having no idea how his job actually worked. Shido being insufferable as a boss wasn’t why Goro was planning on killing him, but it sure didn’t help.

“Guess I can see why’d you want a little more excitement,” Sakamoto said, “but we’ve known about that part of your life since the beginning. Or at least some of us have.” He cast a significant look back over his shoulder at Kurusu, who shrugged. “Whatever. He was keeping an eye on the situation, just in case you were up to anything.” He paused, like he thought that maybe playing up the drama would get Goro to slip up and give something away. “So is there any reason you’re still in contact with the SIU? And don’t play dumb, we hacked your phone.”

“You did what?” He let himself be righteously offended about that one, even though there was still very little chance they’d learned anything worth knowing. The most they’d get from the only phone he’d ever let them see were his Twitter passwords and that was embarrassing but not dangerous. “Have you been using my Snapchat? Is that why I lost all of my streaks?" He didn't have streaks with anyone because he didn't have friends, but Sakamoto was easily distracted by meaningless arguments.

“Well, technically Futaba monitors all outgoing transmissions from here to make sure none of our cars are bugged or have tracking devices or anything, but it sounds cooler to say you got hacked.” And then, indignant: “And stop trying to change the subject!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, buying himself enough time to try to calculate how much damage control he had to do. Probably not much, anymore, because by now he'd realized that they _wanted_ him to have answers. They wanted him to tell them everything was fine, to fill in the gaps in his story, and they would believe his excuses, no matter how flimsy they were, because they didn't actually want to deal with the alternative. “You think the only kind of case I take is cheating spouses?” He put every ounce of well-earned arrogance into his voice that he could muster. “Sometimes they hire me for consultation, because if you have that kind of budget you might as well hire the best. Nothing about any of you, though. The SIU has bigger priorities than a few delinquents racking up speeding tickets. Nothing I could tell you about, of course. Confidential, you know.” Sakamoto rolled his eyes at that, and Goro shrugged as if to say, _what do you want from me_ . He _was_ the best, even if his own illegal activities gave him an advantage, and most of what he’d said was even true this time. Apparently that was all they wanted from him, for the moment, because Sakamoto and Kurusu locked eyes briefly, before Kurusu gave a slight nod and Sakamoto set down his gun on the workbench and offered Goro his hand, pulling him to his feet. His hand, rough and bare, scrapes on the knuckles and the beginnings of a tattoo just visible under the bands he wore around his wrist, left a smear of engine grease on Goro’s glove. It likely wouldn’t show very much, but he had a spare pair of identical gloves anyway. Just in case.

“Good to know, in case we ever need to hire a P.I.,” said Sakamoto.

“You couldn’t afford me,” said Goro, one hand on his hip, deciding at the last second against winking, but he assumed the flirtation came through in his tone anyway.

“Not even a discount for friends?” said Kurusu, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, is that what we are? Do you threaten all your friends at gunpoint, or just the ones you’re sleeping with and also suspect of being undercover cops? Which, can I just say, is a risky move on your part? Obviously it’s fine because I’m not actually planning on having you arrested but still, not your smartest decision.” To be fair, he was absolutely still planning on betraying them, just not specifically to the police though they’d probably be involved at some point, and in their defense, he clearly also enjoyed flirting with danger, both figuratively and literally, given the way they made him feel constantly just a little bit off-balance, caught in the moment when you took a turn too fast and didn’t know if your tires would maintain traction or if your car would spin out and send you crashing over the guardrail, and the likelihood that this would end with at least one of them dead.

Sakamoto scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Yeah, sorry about that. In my defense, I thought you were selling us out, and I really don’t wanna go to prison, you know?”

“I understand,” he said. “No hard feelings. Well. No resentment, at any rate.” He did wink now, flirting reflexively with very little input from his brain, a way to relieve the tension that hovered over the three of them, something to distract him and provide an outlet for his nervous energy, because neither of his usual options were available to him: violence was the outcome he had tried so hard to avoid, and his car was parked outside but leaving in the middle of a conversation would have been rude and he didn't have time for a long enough drive to calm him down now anyway, not if he wanted to be functional as early in the morning as he needed to be.

“That was so bad,” Kurusu said, after a moment of staring, but he laughed and the tension shattered, because the sound of his laughter, quiet and joyful and unexpected, could make Goro forget all the reasons why he shouldn't care about making him laugh and only care about hearing the sound again. “I would’ve expected that from Ryuji, not you.”

“Yeah, we’re spending too much time together,” Sakamoto said. “You could almost say he’s-” he coughed a little bit, choking on his own laughter, in his haste to make an even worse joke “-rubbing off on me.”

“You could, if you have the sense of humor of a particularly immature teenager,” said Goro, primly. "I wouldn't."

“Hey, you started it,” said Sakamoto.

“Technically, Kurusu kissed me first, so actually I think you’ll find he started it.”

“You leave me out of this," Kurusu said mildly, and Sakamoto kissed the side of his face lightly before turning to Goro and sticking out his tongue, proving Goro's point about his sense of humor and relative maturity level. “And on that note, I’m heading back inside. Either or both of you are welcome to join me.”

He started to turn away, Sakamoto following him, and they both looked back toward Goro, who shook his head, genuinely regretful that he had such an early morning the next day, and also that this had been... not as close as call as it seemed at first but still a reminder of exactly why he was meant to be keeping his distance. “Some of us still have day jobs.”

“Isn’t a midlife crisis about quitting those?” said Sakamoto. “Or are you getting closer to retirement age by now, old man?”

“Ha ha,” he said, unamused. Wearing sweater vests did not make him look like he was cosplaying a grandfather, they made him look simultaneously both professional and approachable. The argument had become so familiar that he could have it in his sleep, but Sakamoto was still into him anyway, so clearly his fashion sense wasn’t that much of a turnoff. Or maybe he was just eager to see him without clothes on so that he didn’t have to look at his sweater vests anymore. “See you around.”

He touched each of their shoulders softly as he left, because they might be sleeping together but hugging was a step too far, and pretended he wasn’t horribly jealous of the way they leaned into each other, fit together easily as breathing. Whatever, good for them. It wasn't like he had any right to be jealous, and he wasn't. He definitely wasn't.

He didn’t get much sleep that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title for the whole work and also each chapter from Planetary (Go!) by My Chemical Romance, series title from Bulletproof Heart by My Chemical Romance again
> 
> shout out to my roommates for watching all of the Fast & Furious movies with me and also encouraging me to actually write this
> 
> the whole thing is written but some parts of it need more editing than others so. planning to have chapter 2 up sometime over the weekend hopefully
> 
> come say hi (and also see previews of the rest of the fic and also other stuff I'm working on) on [twitter](https://twitter.com/selkie_au_lover%22)


	2. if my velocity starts to make you sweat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we finally see some cars go fast. and also furious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings relevant to this chapter: reckless driving, car crashes, references to offscreen sexual content, canon-typical levels of Goro's lack of regard for his own physical and emotional well-being, poorly-negotiated polyamory due to the previously mentioned lack of regard for his own emotional well-being and also the whole 'unreliable narrator specifically when it comes to feelings' thing

**_two months later_ **

It was a warm night, with the moon over the ocean shrouded in haze and hardly any wind to speak of, but not so hot that it would be unbearable with the windows up and the air con off, and not so humid that the roads would be treacherous, which made it an ideal night for a race, especially on this stretch of road, a remote twisty bit of highway overlooking the sea, especially when his opponent was Kurusu, against whom every extra advantage would have to count.

This wasn’t even a major event, but he and Kurusu had never had a proper competition before, never actually raced each other beyond a little bit of friendly jostling for position when all of the Phantom Thieves were travelling together, not since the day they met. He hadn’t exactly meant to start thinking of himself as one of them, and when he caught himself he tried to justify it as method acting, strengthening his cover, and ignored the quiet ache in the pit of his stomach at the reminder that it was only an act. And surely they had to know it too. After all, he’d never promised them more than the next race, had always responded to invitations too far in the future or too fraught with commitment with a tight-lipped smile and a vague _who knows what the future will hold_. If pressed, usually by Sakamoto, who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, he’d remind him that this had only ever been temporary, that he had a job and a life outside of this world, that really, he was no different from those lost investment bankers in the throes of their midlife crises, grasping at fast cars like shiny new toys until they got bored and set them down on the shelf to gather dust again. No one ever seemed particularly convinced by that argument.

The two of them had technically raced the first time they met, when Goro had joined the Phantom Thieves. It was one of the biggest racing events of the year, a tournament that brought together crews from all over Japan and even a few from abroad, and Goro was going to win it. He had to, if he wanted to make a good enough first impression to be let into that world properly, so that he could identify and take down the so-called Phantom Thieves who’d been causing so many problems for Shido’s operation. It wasn’t just that illegal street racing was flourishing and every ambitious politician with aspirations of becoming Prime Minister had to pick a cause so that they could prove that they were doing their bit to clean up the country, and that the Phantom Thieves were flashy enough to become urban legends, mysterious enough that no one knew their true identities and faster than anyone else on the road. It was what they did when they weren’t winning every race.

It was that they used their fast cars to steal from people who could afford to be stolen from, on both sides of the law—though by now he knew that Kurusu would argue that it should be illegal to be a billionaire and he couldn’t honestly say he disagreed—people with whom Shido had business dealings, both legal and illegal. They were taking money out of the pockets of his conspiracy and redistributing it, some to themselves, of course, but a surprising amount of what they got for their fenced goods they gave away. He hadn’t known that yet, when he met the Thieves, had only known that they were responsible for losses in profit and a myriad of assorted problems and failures and conflicts between members of the conspiracy that it always seemed to fall to him to resolve, because God forbid anyone else do any actual fucking work.

He’d paid the buy-in with what was left of the money he’d been given for this mission, everything that hadn’t gone into the car, and won his heat easily enough. The competition got a little tougher as he advanced to the next round and then the next, but not by much, and he had to work a little harder to win in the semifinal against Niijima who had never quite forgiven him for it. He hadn’t known who she was yet, hadn’t recognized her as a Phantom Thief when she was in a car instead of on a motorcycle, and definitely hadn’t recognized her as the little sister of one of Tokyo’s top prosecutors with her leather jacket and the nitro under her hood, but he knew Kurusu instantly. In any other setting he would’ve been completely unremarkable, a quiet unassuming man dressed all in black. But in this setting, a pair of flashy white sunglasses on his face, a confidant smirk on his lips, standing next to the most infamous car in Tokyo—the distinctive red decals bright against the gleaming black paint, the sun’s reflection blinding on the hubcaps, brilliant and shiny and chrome—there was no question that he was the one the tabloids were calling Joker.

Later, he would learn that Kurusu had a journalist friend who made sure their preferred nicknames were the ones that caught on, but at the time, all he could think about was wiping that smile off his face. When he shrugged off his jacket to reveal the sleeveless shirt he was wearing underneath, the high collar accentuating the smooth lines of his throat and the sharp angles of his jaw, his wiry, muscular upper arms covered in tattoos that disappeared under hem of what looked like a binder, the heat in Goro’s chest had nothing to do with the bright afternoon sun beating down on them. Joker handed his jacket off to Takamaki—he hadn’t known her name yet then either, had only catalogued blonde hair and red leather, and then he had to look away as she kissed Joker on the cheek—and turned his attention to Goro.

“You’re here alone, right?” he said, and his voice was softer, kinder, than Goro was expecting. “No crew?”

“Don’t need one,” he said, letting his pleasant, bland customer service smile drop and replacing it with something a little harsher, a little more arrogant. “What’s it to you?”

“Do you really think they’ll let you leave here in one piece if you win and try to take the cash prize with you?”

“Anyone’s welcome to try to stop me,” he said.

“They’ll kill you.”

“They’ll try,” he corrected, “but not if I’m fast enough, and if I’m fast enough to beat you I’m not especially worried about anyone else. Unless you’re the one who’s going to stop me.”

He made an offended face. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m going to offer you a job. You beat me, you’re in, no questions asked. And you seem like the kind of man who’s not going to answer many questions.”

“The only question worth asking,” Goro said, maintaining eye contact in a way that was half challenge and half flirtation, “is who’s going to finish first.”

In the end it was a draw, and neither of them had given it their all. Probably, if illegal street racing did photo finishes, the victory would’ve been given to Joker, but that didn’t really matter. What mattered is that they were evenly matched, both holding back, both watching to see what the other would do. It was still the best race of his life and it was just a taste of what they could do together, what they could get each other to do.

The money was split between them, and Joker offered him his hand. He’d taken his gloves off at the end of the race, stuffed carelessly into his pocket, and there was a smudge of grease on his hand that he wiped off on his jeans sheepishly. Goro found it strangely endearing. “Nice job,” he said. “Offer’s still open, if you want it.”

“You said I could join if I won,” Goro said, because even though this guy was offering him the exact in he wanted, it felt too easy. No one trusted that quickly, not if they wanted to stay alive. “I didn’t beat you. Not yet.”

“Yet, huh?”

“We both know that wasn’t the best either of us can do,” he said. “And there’s always next time.”

“Especially if you take what I’m trying to give you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Come on, like you don’t know how good you are,” said Joker, but he’d taken his sunglasses off at the end of the race and his eyes were flickering up and down his body, and Goro knew when he was being checked out. He hadn’t dressed like he was expecting to be flirted with, but for how straight this world tended to be, it wasn’t exactly rare to meet men who were hornier for cars than drivers and would fall for anyone with a fast enough set of wheels and a hot enough engine. He didn’t tend to go for that kind of thing very often, between the tiresome burden of navigating casual sex with cis people and his own special flavor of resistance to any sort of vulnerability, but he had no such reservations against a few suggestive words and glances if it would get him what he wanted. Kurusu, though. If he was right, and he usually was, when it came to recognizing people who were like him—because he had to be, because there were so few that he could have any meaningful contact with—then Kurusu was in some ways, ironically, the safest person he’d found himself start to be attracted to in years. “Any crew would be lucky to have you. I knew that from the first time I saw you drive, in that very first heat.”

“Then why make it conditional on losing if you were going to offer anyway?”

“Didn’t think you’d accept the invitation unless I made it a challenge.”

“Invitation, huh.” He gave him a slow look-over. “And what, exactly, does that invitation include?”

“Whatever you want,” Kurusu said. “At the very least, we make sure you survive today.”

“Whatever I want,” Goro repeated. “How about your car?”

“Within reason,” he said, with a wry smile tugging at his lips, scratching the back of his neck in a gesture Goro would later recognize as something picked up from Sakamoto. “Some things are still sacred.”

“And what if what I want is you?” he said, which was a bit of a gamble but between the heated looks and the rush of finally facing some real competition he thought the odds were pretty good.

“I think that can be arranged.” It was almost definitely a mistake, and another mistake to let it continue, to let another person get involved, to let one night become two, become an arrangement, something that if he didn’t know better, he might’ve called a relationship. He was just stupid and touch-starved and lonely and high on adreniline, and they left the race together—separate cars, Goro following him back to a hotel room, not yet trusted with any location he was planning to return to—and it would’ve been fine if Kurusu hadn’t been so fucking nice to him.

This was a much smaller event than that one had been. The only other crews here, a handful of cars scattered in the pull-off near the starting line, were people that the Phantom Thieves, for lack of better word, more or less trusted. It was a rare thing in this world, but Kurusu seemed to inspire that in people, seemed to earn their loyalty simply by treating them as they already had his trust. Unfortunately for him, it only took one person resisting his charm to bring everything crashing down. Unfortunately for all of them, Goro had a job to do, a job that had to be done no matter how his heart raced whenever Kurusu looked at him with those eyes and that damn smirk, no matter how well he and Kurusu and Sakamoto fit together, on the road and in bed. He could never bring himself to stay the night, though, not after the first time, when the whole situation had been so painfully domestic: Ryuji curled around him, snoring softly, the sounds of Akira humming to himself slightly off-key as he cooked them breakfast, all of it peaceful and comfortable and so fucking happy, and he didn’t belong. It was never something that had been on the table for him and he used to always think he’d made his peace with that.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to break off their arrangement altogether, justifying it to himself by saying that it would look suspicious, that it was too early to risk jeopardizing his place in their crew like that, but really, there was no way they weren’t at least a little suspicious, even if they’d apparently bought his excuse easily enough, and he was really just stealing these moments for himself, moments when he could almost let himself forget what he had to do. It wasn’t like he was ever going to have a chance at a real relationship, or real happiness, so he might as well pretend while he could.

He left his car by the starting line, making his way through the crowd on foot.Someone had already set up the road closure signs, and Takamaki was leaning against the barricade, chatting with a few people from Narukami’s crew. Suzui was with her, sitting in a folding chair with her head resting on Takamaki’s thigh, her cane leaning against the armrest, as Takamaki ran one hand through her girlfriend’s hair. Nearby, Sakura was sitting on top of her car, the windows rolled down so the police scanner was clearly audible. He was surprised not to see Mishima there hanging on to her every word, but maybe he’d finally realized that she wasn’t going to sleep with him. Or maybe the radio was just that boring. There wouldn’t be police interference tonight anyway. He could’ve called the cops on them, true, but getting them busted for a little bit of racing wasn’t enough, wouldn’t stick, and it would just make them too skittish, too aware that he was a traitor after all for him to be able to take them out more permanently.

He didn’t have much time left to act, he knew that. His lip curled as he heard Shido’s voice in his memory, condescending and dismissive, reminding him that the election was approaching, that the thieves had to be dealt with before then, and if Goro didn’t do it soon, someone else would, and they probably wouldn’t try too hard to make sure they didn’t get rid of him while they were at it. His cleaner, especially, had never been known for his restraint, and he’d never really gotten along with Goro, a mix of professional jealousy and petty personal disagreements. (This, too, was an understatement. Last time they’d exchanged more than a terse nod across a room, Goro had bruised his ego and he had broken Goro’s nose.) So it would have to be soon. But not here, not now. This wasn’t about the conspiracy, wasn’t about Shido or the police or his revenge. This was about him and Kurusu, the road beneath their tires and the engines hot under their hoods.

“Oh good, you’re here!” said Okumura—Haru, he had to call her Haru, if he wanted to be able to interact with her without replaying her father’s death in his head, his eyes going blank and his blood soaking into Goro’s shoes—waving as she saw him. “Akira was looking for you.”

“I _told_ him he was probably just running late from work, but no, he had to start worrying,” said Morgana, looking up from tinkering with something under the hood of his van. It was a clunky old thing that didn’t look like it was even capable of driving above the speed limit, but Morgana always sounded so proud of the work he was constantly doing on it, and Goro had to admit that it was significantly faster than it looked, which made it ideal as a getaway vehicle.

“He worries because he cares,” Haru said. “He worries about you, too, you know.”

“Yeah, well, with the cops causing so many problems recently, it’s hard not to worry I guess. So don’t give him extra reasons to be concerned.” He directed this toward Goro, accompanied by a glare. Morgana had been the most suspicious of him from the start, but it seemed like he was warming up to him, just in time for his first impression to be proven right. This Morgana, anyway. Kurusu’s cat Morgana, currently sleeping in a little curled up ball of fur on Okumura’s lap, had latched onto him right away and would probably be meowing loudly for Goro to pet him if he weren’t currently asleep. Kurusu said it was because cats recognized people who were kind and trustworthy and deserved their affection. Goro said it was because he bribed him with scraps of sushi.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Goro, and Morgana sniffed, clearly unconvinced, but returned to fussing with his engine anyway. “Are either of you racing tonight?”

“I have a bet to settle with one of Arisato’s people,” Haru said, smiling sweetly in a way that made Goro pity her opponent. “Human Morgana still has a bunch of tuning up to do before the Monabus will be ready to race again, though.”

“Augh! Why do you all have to call me that?”

“To tell you apart from the true Morgana, obviously,” said Goro, fighting back the discomfort he felt in Haru’s presence in order to scratch Morgana behind the ears. He blinked sleepily and let out a pitiful meow at having been rudely awoken, but then rubbed his face against Goro’s hand, which he took to mean that he had been forgiven. Ironic, all things considered. Cats were supposed to be good judges of character.

“Not you too!” wailed Human Morgana, putting grease-streaked hands to his face in exaggerated horror. “Go find your boyfriends before I get any more frantic text messages.”

Goro grumbled something about them not actually being his boyfriends, which everyone ignored, and pushed his way through the crowd to where he guessed Kurusu and Sakamoto would be.

They had parked together, a little ways away from the densest knot of cars and people, close enough to the edge of the overlook that the soft whisper of the ocean waves could be heard over the mess of cheerful voices and music pounding on car stereos. They weren’t saying anything as he approached, not even looking his direction, leaning against the trunk of Sakamoto’s car, hand in hand, staring out at the sea. He hesitated for a moment, almost turned around and walked away, swallowing down the unexpected surge of bitter jealousy in his throat. He’d hovered for a moment too long, long enough that Kurusu turned and saw him, a wide grin spreading across his face as he waved him over, one hand still tangled with Sakamoto’s.

“You ready for this?” Kurusu said.

“What, ready to kick your ass?” he said. “I’ve been waiting for a long time.”

“Save it for the road,” said Sakamoto, draping an arm around his shoulders, and despite himself he shifted closer, leaning into his infectious warmth.

“What are the stakes?” said Kurusu, a competitive gleam in his eyes. Or maybe that was just the glare of headlights reflecting off his glasses.

“Nothing you’re not afraid to lose,” Goro said, “and I don’t want your money.”

“Good,” Kurusu said. “Do you even have money for me to take?”

“Fuck off,” he said mildly. “My job doesn’t pay that badly.”

—“And yet, still not well enough to get you cooler clothes,” said Sakamoto. “Though I gotta say, you don’t look too bad right now.” He removed his arm from his shoulder and dropped Kurusu’s hand so that he could get to work on loosening Goro’s tie.

—“Like you’re one to talk,” he said. Not that Sakamoto looked bad either, he never did, but the spikes on his leather jacket were maybe a little much. Much like the man himself, his fashion sense was an acquired taste. Goro refused to acknowledge how charming he found either.

“Yeah, well, at least I don’t wear a tie to a race,” he said, glaring at the clothing item in question like it had personally offended him. Their faces were very close together, Sakamoto’s forehead wrinkled in concentration, the tip of his tongue sticking out as he struggled with the knot of the tie. When he had it undone, he stepped back, considering his handiwork, and then moved closer again, evidently deciding that the tie had to be removed entirely. Goro saw his point—he had come here directly from the office, after all—but he also thought it was a bit hypocritical for someone wearing a scarf like it was a cravat. Not that he didn’t pull off the look very well. Or that it wasn’t partially his fault Sakamoto had to wear the scarf to cover the marks on his neck, though Kurusu shared some responsibility for that as well. “And I’ll have you know these jackets don’t come cheap.”

“Maybe if you spent less money on fashion and more on your engine you’d lose less.” Losing less would mean he never lost at all, except maybe to him and Kurusu, and they all knew it.

“Hey, it’s not like I pay for these with _my_ money,” he said, rolling his eyes. “What do you think, do we need to undo some of these buttons?”

“Definitely,” Kurusu said, and Goro sighed, entirely for show, and enthusiastically allowed himself to be further disheveled. By the time Takamaki came to find them for their race, the top three buttons of his shirt were undone, Kurusu’s hair was even more of a mess than usual and his glasses were smudged—he really did need them now, though he’d told Goro once that he’d started out wearing fake glasses in high school to make himself look less threatening—and Sakamoto had another bruise to hide under his scarf.

They all rode in Kurusu’s car to the starting line, and Kurusu rolled down his window so that Sakamoto could kiss him thoroughly for luck, and Goro definitely wasn’t staring and wasn’t jealous, he knew the choices he was making and he knew that his own emotional hang-ups would have prevented him from committing to a relationship with them even if he wasn’t their enemy and he knew that he wasn’t built for love like that but. None of that meant it didn’t hurt, to be so close to something he didn’t deserve and could never have. They loved each other, so fiercely and comfortably that it was difficult to imagine a world where they weren’t always by each other’s side. They just fit together, in such an easy and automatic way that Goro couldn’t ever imagine experiencing. But then again he had never belonged anywhere, let alone with anyone.

And then Sakamoto knocked on his window, and Goro rolled it down, somehow not expecting Sakamoto to reach in and grab him by his horribly rumpled collar and pull him into a searing kiss. When he released him, leaving him breathless and hungry for more, he couldn’t tell if that had been for luck, the way Kurusu’s had been, or if he’d been trying to distract him so that his boyfriend could claim the victory.

And then Mika was standing in front of their cars as they revved their engines, the scarf she raised above her head fluttering in the slight breeze, and Kurusu caught his eye and smirked. “Good luck,” he said, clearly enough that Goro could read his lips, could imagine the double edge of flirtation and danger in his voice as he said it, even though he couldn’t possibly hear over the sounds of their motors and the cheers of Kurusu’s crew. “You’ll need it.”

“Not as much as you,” he said, returning Kurusu’s smirk with a harsh, feral grin of his own.

And then Mika dropped her arms, and Goro tore his eyes away from Akira and hit the gas pedal, his head pinned against the headrest as his car shot forward, and the only thing that mattered was the race: his hands on the wheel, his grip soft, the glide of his tires on the pavement as he drifted, the engine roaring underneath him as he coaxed it faster and faster, paying attention of every subtle shift of his hand on the gearshift and his feet light on the pedals, attuned to every bend and dip in the road, every change in the motion of Kurusu’s car, the purr of its engine and the flash of its lights. Nothing else mattered, because nothing else existed.

He and Kurusu were evenly matched: both of their cars were as finely tuned as the best mechanics in the business could make them and too powerful to be driven on ordinary roads, and both of them were talented drivers, with the right balance of caution and recklessness—though Goro tended more towards calculation and Kurusu to improvisation—and they stayed close until the final turn, mostly side by side when there was space and switching who gained the lead each time there wasn’t, sometimes scraping the sides of their cars together as someone—usually Goro—tried to force the other into the ditch on the non-cliff side of the road.

The last turn on the course, at the bottom of a descending section of highway, directly before the road rose and turned away from the ocean, was sharper than the others, and they’d picked up speed on the way down, accelerating out of each of the previous turns. Goro was ahead, just ever so slightly, and drifting farther to the outside of the curve than he’d meant to. He was under control, he was _always_ under control, in all aspects of his life, he just had slightly less control over his momentum than would have been ideal, and it gave Kurusu an opening, just enough space to slip next to him on the inside of the turn, so they were side by side again, neither of them completely in control of how their cars were sliding toward the cliff on the far side of the road, and the ocean below. His tires spun briefly against some loose gravel at the very edge, but he managed to stay on the pavement, regaining control just in time.

Kurusu, accelerating to pass him on the inside of the turn, didn’t.

Later, he would find out that Kurusu had just barely stayed on the road, that he’d been wildly out of control and spun across the finish line, only to jump out of his moving car before it crashed into the steep incline on the other side of the road, but at the time all he noticed was that Kurusu still salvaged the turn, that even after colliding with Goro’s car and sending it tumbling over the edge, he managed to keep himself on the road, and all Goro could think, in the strange frozen moment when he was suspended in midair, was _if that isn’t a metaphor for our entire lives_ and then, more embarrassingly, _he looks so fucking cool_.

And then his car crashed back down into the ground, rolling down the steep rocky slope, and he wasn’t thinking about Kurusu, or metaphors, or anything except surviving the immediate situation.

The car ground to a halt, upside down, and from how it was swaying he could tell it was balanced just on the edge of where the slope turned into a sharp drop. He unbuckled his seatbelt, tried to very slowly begin climbing out the shattered window within sending the car, and himself with it, tumbling into the sea. Losing the car would be a setback, both logistically and—if he were being honest with himself—emotionally, in a sappy sentimental sort of way, but he could figure it out. Dying here, like this, was not an option.

He got one arm out the window, grateful that his gloves at least protected his hands from the shards of glass. The ground was rough and rocky, too loose for him to find a secure handhold anywhere, and as he tried to inch just a little bit, his forearms pressed against the ground and his head just barely outside the car, it gave a concerning lurch and he froze, heart pounding in his chest, and he felt oddly detached, as though he were watching all of this happen to a stranger while he floated slightly to the left of his body. He had always expected to die young and bloody, but he’d assumed it would be more deliberate. He had pictured a gunfight, a brawl, an ambush, an execution. Something about it being an accident felt so anticlimactic, so humiliating and disappointing that it almost seemed fitting now that he was forcibly given the opportunity to consider it.

And then Kurusu was reaching for him, hand outstretched, his face smudged with dirt and blood and grease, looking terribly young and vulnerable with his glasses missing, something wild and desperate in his expression. Goro glanced back, at his ruined car and the sea below, and back up at Kurusu, who was shouting for Goro to take his hand, as if he didn’t know his own life would be so much easier if he let him fall.

He stretched out his hand anyway, cautious and slow, not wanting to risk destabilizing the car any further, but he couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t quite close the smallest gap between their fingertips.

“You have to jump!”

_I can’t, I’ll fall_ , he wanted to say, _you fucking idiot_. But he wasn’t sure he could manage enough lung capacity to shout from his position, and even if he did there was never any point arguing with Kurusu about anything, no matter how ridiculous or wrong-headed.

“Please,” he said, “I’ll catch you, Goro, please.”

The car began to slide with a horrible metallic scraping sound, just a few centimeters at first, and then faster and louder, and he couldn’t tell what Kurusu was shouting anymore but his hand was still reaching out. Later, Goro would pretend to himself that he’d looked a lot cooler than he did, but the truth was he kicked out in a moment of blind panic, accidentally managed to use the crumpled hood of his falling car to push off of, and only caught Kurusu’s hand because he was lunging for a handhold on the cliffside and Kurusu was in the way.

That wasn’t the truth either, though he did his level best to act like it was, because the alternative—that he’d let Kurusu save him, that either of them had done it on purpose—wasn’t worth thinking about.

There was a moment—a terrible, infinite moment—when he couldn’t tell if he was jumping or falling or flying, when his only point of contact with anything was Kurusu’s hand and he was convinced that they were both going to fall together. There was an even more terrible moment, a split second of awful false clarity, when he thought that might not be so bad.

And then Kurusu somehow hauled him up to where the ground was slightly more level and then lay there, panting, still holding Goro’s hand so tightly his fingers were going numb as his car fell into the sea below them, shattered, exploded, the dull sound of it blending with the thud of the waves, and Goro, still riding the high of the race, alive in the way he could only feel because he expected to be dead, stared up at the stars and laughed, and still neither of them let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back at it again with a chapter title from Planetary (Go!) by MCR. it would've been too long to put the whole line "if my velocity starts to make you sweat then just don't let go" as the chapter title because that would be a bit too much I think but I did consider it because like, this isn't a songfic but it isn't *not* a songfic, y'know?
> 
> this one took a little longer to edit than I was expecting but stay tuned for the last chapter in a week or so!
> 
> as always, I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/selkie_au_lover) having emotions about these disaster boys and also occasionally being gay about the abstract concept of driving fast


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